Daimnation!

The greatest of all time (II)

Michael Schumacher won his 11th race of the year today, tying his own record for most wins in a season. The thing is, this morning's German Grand Prix was only the twelfth race of the year.

The best measure of Schuey's talent is the performance of Rubens Barrichello, driving an identical Ferrari. This weekend, Barrichello - who I'd put about even with Ralf Schumacher and David Coulthard in driving ability, and not too far behind Raikkonen and Montoya - qualified 8th and finished out of the points after an accident early in the race. Rubinho occasionally beats Schumacher in qualifying, and he's been screwed by team orders on more than one occasion, but I'd say Michael beats him around 90% of the time - and usually by a pretty wide margin.

People will still argue that Fangio/Prost/Clark/Stewart/Graham Hill/Senna is the best driver of all time, just as some people insist Gordie Howe or Bobby Orr was greater than Wayne Gretzky. But for crying out loud, the guy has 81 career victories now. (As one of the Speed Channel announcers noted this morning, Jackie Stewart only started 99 races in his entire career.) Numbers aren't everything, but this is a case where the numbers are so overwhelming that I don't see how you can't call Schuey the greatest ever.

People complain about how Schumacher has made F1 boring, but fifty years from now, we'll be bragging to our grandkids about watching him.

The greatest of all time (I)

Lance Armstrong won his sixth consecutive Tour de France today. And just eight years ago, doctors told him he had less than a 50% chance of surviving cancer.

There are few words than can do justice to an achievement like this. But it's a sad commentary on the times in which we live that I just can't put the doping allegations against Armstrong - which he vigorously denies - out of my mind. And I'm sure I'm not the only one.

Armstrong opened a new page for the Tour in 1999, just one year after the race faced its worst doping scandal, ejecting the Festina team after police caught one of its employees with a stash of drugs.
[...]
With five solo stage wins and a team time-trial victory with his U.S. Postal Service squad, this was Armstrong's best Tour. But it was also one in which he was forced to defend himself against claims he might be taking performance-enhancing drugs.

Before the Tour, Armstrong sued authors of a book who implied, without offering proof, that he used drugs.

Until proven otherwise, Armstrong must be given the benefit of the doubt. I hope the allegations are false. But ever since a fateful day in 1988 - when I first saw TSN reporting on rumours that Ben Johnson had tested positive for steroids, just days after winning the gold at the Seoul Olympics - I find it hard to look at any athlete who pulls off a feat like this without wondering, is he clean? If the early-80s Wayne Gretzky was playing today, I'd almost certainly be wondering the same thing. Being accused of steroid use is like being accused of child molestation - even if the person is cleared or acquitted, people will always wonder if there was something to the allegations.

I feel like an asshole writing about this, but we've all been burned so many times before. And it's not fair to a man who, by pretty much any standard, has to be called the greatest cyclist of all time.

The Archbishop of Dhimmitude

The Sunday Times reports that the Archbishop of Canterbury, worldwide spiritual leader of the denomination in which I was raised, will commemorate the third anniversary of 9/11 by sucking up to the Islamofascists on their own turf:

THE head of the worldwide Anglican Church, the archbishop of Canterbury, will reportedly mark the third anniversary of the September 11 attacks by praising Islam in an address from the pulpit of an Egyptian mosque.

He would speak of the common ground between Christianity and Islam with their shared inheritance as "children of Abraham", the report said.

I would not mind this so much, if Williams was going to make such an address on almost any other date, and/or if he would be brave enough to speak out against the genocidal, xenophobic hatred spewed in the name of Islam from the very institution where he'll make his speech. Unfortunately, I know enough about the Archbishop to know there's almost no chance of that happening.

This amounts to nothing less than begging forgiveness from extremist Muslims for "provoking" them into murdering 3,000 people, on the anniversary of the killing. It's like singing the praises of German culture on the anniversary of Kristallnacht. And in a long, long history of absolutely repugnant political positions taken by the Anglican church, this one is in a class of its own.

I will still go to church with my family on Christmas Eve, but I can no longer, in good conscience, consider myself an Anglican.

(via LGF)

The new Barry Sanders

Actually, that's not quite accurate, since Sanders played ten seasons before his shocking retirement in 1999. Ricky Williams, by contrast, is calling it quits at age 27, after just five seasons:

Miami Dolphins running back Ricky Williams has told the team he plans to retire after just five NFL seasons, The Miami Herald reported on its Web site early Sunday morning.

"I'm finally free. I can't remember ever being this happy."

Williams - who has a history of strange behavior, was diagnosed with a personality disorder while playing for the Saints, and recently failed a drug test - is ultimately responsible for his own decisions. If he's really not happy playing the game, and he believes he's made enough money to stay comfortable for the rest of his life, well, that's his choice. But his natural ability is a gift with which only a few have been blessed, and I can't help thinking there's just something wrong about walking away from it while he still has some good years left.

If he played until he was 30 or 31, he'd have his whole life ahead of him to do whatever he wants. But if he regrets his decision by the time he reaches that age, it may be too late for him to get back into the game, certainly at the level he's played in Miami.

I wish him well, but I wish he wasn't doing this. (And I'm not even a Dolphins fan.)

Self-loathing

Oliver Kamm has yet another excellent post about the latent - and not-so-latent - antisemitism of Britain's extreme left. The Socialist Workers' Party - much more influential than its membership numbers would suggest, thanks to its co-option of the "peace" movement - has praised the "fearless" writing of jazz musician Gilad Atzmon, who argues that Jews (specifically, "American Jews") control the world, alleges that Jews killed Jesus and that they're now doing the same to the Palestinians, and complains about the way "anyone who tries to oppose the official Zionist interpretation of World War II events instantly becomes a 'Holocaust denier'." (I'm not linking to Atzmon's website, but you can follow the link from Kamm's site and read this - and much, much more - in the "politics" section. Don't say I didn't warn you.)

As you may have gathered from Atzmon's name, he is himself a Jew originally from Israel. And no one would suggest that an Israeli automatically becomes antisemitic just because he stridently opposes Israeli policies, or even - like Atzmon - calls for the "replacement" of the Jewish state with a "multiracial" country. (No one seriously believes a "binational" Jewish-Palestinian state wouldn't become effectively judenrein within years of its founding, but there are a lot of hopelessly naive people out there.)

But people like Atzmon (and Israel Shamir, and even St. Noam), who identify with those who would destroy him, are the reason the phrase "self-loathing Jew" was invented in the first place. Wiser heads than mine will have to figure out what happened to them to make them feel this way.

Still more interesting than Rubert's site, though

The dullest blog in the world. (via Warren Kinsella)

Moore dishonesty

Even by Michael Moore's usual standards, this one's a whopper. In Fahrenheit 9/11, Moore shows an article from an Illinois newspaper, the Bloomington Pantagraph, headlined "Latest Florida recount shows Gore won election". But the headline originally appeared with a letter to the editor; Moore blew up the headline and altered the page to make it look like an actual news story. And to top it all off, the letter was originally published on Dec. 19, 2001, but Moore inexplicably changed it to Dec. 5.

The guys in Moore's "war room" must be wondering what they've gotten themselves into.

(via The Shotgun)

Update: Moore says the Bush Administration hustled the bin Laden family out of the country, without any kind of screening, before flights resumed following 9/11.

The 9/11 commission report says Moore is full of shit. (Well, their language is a bit more diplomatic than mine.)

Hasselhoff-palooza!

1. David Hasselhoff's video for "Hooked on a Feeling", a huge hit in Germany. (via Andrew Sullivan)

2. Reviews of David Hasselhoff's greatest-hits album (a huge hit in Germany) from Amazon.com. Remember: the track "Hot Shot City" is particularly good.

3. KITT from Knight Rider, for sale on eBay. Honest. (What about KARR?)

11 years overdue

Well, much more than eleven years, actually. But that's how long it's been since the Chretien government, capitalizing on Canadians' distaste for all things military, cancelled the purchase of EH-101 helicopters by the Canadian Forces. The government has finally approved a deal to buy 28 Sikorsky Cyclones, to phase out our 40 year-old Sea Kings:

The federal government, in a bid to calm a whirlwind of political debate, announced Friday it plans to buy 28, bargain-priced Sikorsky Cyclones to replace Canada's geriatric fleet of Sea King helicopters.

The minister claimed the Cyclone, the military version of the Sikorsky S-92, "represents the right helicopter for the Canadian Forces at the best price for Canadians."
[...]
The announcement closed a saga that began in the 1980s, when the Defence Department set out to replace the CH-124 Sea King - also a Sikorsky product.

Opposition critics have long complained the Liberals repeatedly doctored the tender specifications, either to avoid making a decision or to ensure they wouldn't have to buy the same helicopter Chretien had derided while in opposition.

I hope it's not 2045 before these finally get replaced.

It's September 10 in Hollywood

Drudge quotes Frank Rich as saying The Manchurian Candidiate is even more viciously partisan than Fahrenheit 9/11:

"I cannot recall when Hollywood last released a big-budget mainstream feature film as partisan as this one at the height of a presidential campaign."

"The American people are terrified," says Streep's villainous senator early on as, John Ashcroft-style, she wields a national security report promising "another cataclysm, probably nuclear." And so we watch her and the rest of the Manchurian Global cabal exploit that fear in any way possible, using the mass media as a brainwashing tool, manipulating patriotic iconography for political ends. "Compassionate vigilance" is one campaign slogan. A televised election night rally features a Mount Rushmore backdrop (as in a signature Bush photo op) and a chorus line of heroic cops and firemen (reminiscent of the early Bush-Cheney ads exploiting the carnage at ground zero)."

Rich and Drudge have unfairly smeared The Passion of the Christ and Bad Santa, respectively, so I'm going to withhold judgment until I see the movie. But it's becoming painfully obvious that Hollywood sees the Bush Administration as a far greater threat than the Islamofascists who murdered 3,000 of their countrymen on 9/11. The government's anti-terror policies are rhetoric are fair game for criticism, but thrashing them without ever acknowledging why they came into effect is dishonest and cynical.

People in Hollywood are free to believe what they wish (it is Scientology and Kabbalah country, after all), and Manchurian Candidiate director Jonathan Demme should be free to make whatever movie he wants. But would it kill the studios to make one - just one - film in which Osama bin Laden (1957-2002) and his ideological bretheren are the enemies?

The 9/11 report

The complete text, as well as a 35-page executive summary, can be downloaded here. I haven't read it yet (and I'm not sure when, or if, I'll ever find time to read the entire 500+ page report), but I'm sure the conspiracy crowd is already desperately scanning it for proof that Bush and the Joooooooos actually carried out 9/11.

Into Sudan, hopefully

Tony Blair's government is drafting plans for a possible military intervention in Sudan:

Despite a heavy commitment of British armed forces in Iraq and other troublespots, the prime minister has had discussions with advisers for on-the-ground involvement of troops.

But with conditions in hundreds of camps sharply deteriorating this week with the onset of torrential rain, governments across Europe as well as the US are facing calls for action to prevent a repetition of the Rwanda genocide 10 years ago that claimed a million lives. A government official involved in the discussions said Mr Blair was being given regular updates on the condition of the refugees in the Darfur region.
[...]
The UN security council is shortly to table a resolution that is expected to set out a timetable to put pressure on the Sudanese government to resolve the crisis.

There is intense debate between Downing Street and the Foreign Office about the best approach. Some, especially in the Foreign Office, see military involvement as impractical given that Darfur is the size of France, and favour continuing to cajole the government into reining in the Janjaweed and making the camps secure.

For those who believe the world has an obligation to do something about the looming genocide in Sudan, this is a very hopeful sign. I'm bracing myself, of course, for the inevitable calls from the isolationist right about how it's really none of our business, and the ultra-left about this being all about imperialism and oooooil. The Sudanese thugocracy already knows the script:

British troops are welcome to enter the Darfur region, Sudan's foreign minister said yesterday, but they would rapidly find themselves in an Iraq-like situation.

But he said British soldiers would be considered by the people of Darfur as "occupying forces" after a few months and could face the same kind of attacks as in Iraq.

Fumigating the blog

Yes, I've been deleting his posts. (You know who I'm talking about.) I may be infringing upon his constitutional right to make an ass of himself on someone else's website, but since the genius has outed me as a fascist, why should he be surprised?

I've also had to delete most of the posts which respond to him, since they don't make much sense with his posts removed. And Rubert, let me assure you this has nothing to do with your politics: it's your attitude. Plenty of people who disagree with me (from the right and the left) are allowed to post here all the time, but I am not obligated to put up with constant personal insults, cheap shots and asinine arguments about how the phrase "f**k Jews" is not antisemitic.

Now piss off.

A voice for federalism and freedom, silenced

The National Post notes that Jeff Fillion, a popular and controversial DJ at Quebec's to-be-silenced CHOI radio, is an outspoken opponent of Quebec separation and statism. This may not have been the reason so many people (well, around 90, anyway) complained to the CRTC about his station, but it didn't help. (Via Kevin Jaeger at The Shotgun)

Leaving aside the legal issue of freedom of expression and the political issue of the scope of the CRTC's powers, I believe it is very much in the Canadian public interest that Fillion be kept on the air. The reason his station has ruffled so many feathers in Quebec City is not because Fillion is racy -- but because he has dared to express ideas that Quebec's nationalists deem heretical.

But this sanguine reaction should not come as a surprise. Jeff Fillion -- along with Andre Arthur, the anchor of CHOI's sister station -- has long been disliked by Quebec's separatists.
[...]
Unlike most francophone federalists, who are of the soft-nationalistic ilk, and so go soft in their attacks on separatists, Fillion takes no prisoners. Indeed, he is perhaps the only well-known French public voice in the province whose attacks against separatism are full-throated and passionate.

Fillion's audience is made up of young francophones, the kind of voters who are expected to comprise the shock troops of separatism. Day in, day out, he encourages them to refuse the herd mentality of the statist, Quebec model. His ideology is libertarian. (Last winter, for instance, he was one of the few Quebecers who defended Don Cherry's right to say what he did about French hockey players.) And he believes the separatists' national project would add nothing to the rights, freedoms and prosperity we already enjoy. On the contrary, he believes the corporatism and protectionism underlying the nationalistic project threaten these rights. As Fillion sees it, separation would allow Quebec politicians to dramatically extend the interventionist politics that have sprouted since the revolution tranquille.

I would defend Fillion's right to remain on the air even if he were a far-left seperatist. But voices like his are rarely heard in Quebec, and his pending expulsion from the airwaves is a disgrace. Come to think of it, if the Post's profile is accurate, we could use a few more like him in the rest of Canada.

In a related story, Andrew Coyne notes that the Canadian Association of Broadcasters has bravely chosen to take no position on the CHOI controversy. Pathetic.

All you need to know about the New York Times

I'll give the paper credit for its editorial calling upon Yasser Arafat to retire. But even here, we have an absolutely classic example of Times touchy-feeliness:

[Arafat] is, after all, a democratically elected leader, though the term he won in 1996 was never meant to be this long.

You know what that's normally called? It's called "not being a democratically elected leader."

(By the way, is "touchy-feeliness" really a word? I guess it is now.)

Why lawyers have a bad name, continued

When I read about this in Patrick Bedard's Car and Driver column, I thought it must be a joke. It isn't: the state of New Jersey is suing Nissan for not warning Maxima owners that their cars' xenon headlights are a common target for thieves:

Is a manufacturer legally obligated to tell its customers that its product has become a hot target for thieves?

In a suit filed Monday in Somerset County, the state accused Nissan North America Inc. of failing to warn customers that the super-bright xenon headlights on its Maximas were a favorite among thieves. In addition, it did not tell customers that a kit was available to make the lights more secure, even as it was alerting its dealers about the kit.
[...]
"We allege the company sold cars with these fancy lights, but kept consumers in the dark about how attractive the headlamps were to thieves," Erdos said. "Nissan's actions, or lack thereof, rendered consumers vulnerable to the criminals who targeted their vehicles." Nissan declined to comment on the lawsuit, but said in a statement that no manufacturer has done more to reduce xenon headlight theft.

Victims had to pay about $1,800 for reinstallation of the headlamps, although the final cost was often $4,000 or more because of other damage thieves did in removing the moon-blue lights. The lights would sell on the street for about $200, Harvey said.

As you can see, there's a kind of logic at work here; Nissan developed an anti-theft kit for the headlights, but did not do enough to warn its customers about it. But ultimately, the very basis of this lawsuit is that people in New Jersey are presumably too dim to know a high-quality product may be stolen.

It wasn't that long ago, of course, that someone went after McDonald's for not warning customers its food might make you fat. The suit was thrown out - but how long before one judge is finally convinced otherwise?

(Speaking of which: the last time I ate at McDonald's, I noticed how they're trying to promote exercise and healthier eating habits in a lot of their promotional materials. And I'm sure I'm not the only lawyer who thought, "hey, they're trying to associate fast food with healthy living, which presumably would give the guys who want to sue them more grounds for a lawsuit.")

You knew it was coming

A lesbian couple in Ontario has applied for Canada's first same-sex divorce:

The women, known only as M.M. and J.H., tied the knot on June 18, 2003, a week after the Ontario Court of Appeal legalized same-sex marriage, but separated five days later.

"This is the first same-sex divorce case in Canada to our knowledge," Martha McCarthy, a Toronto family lawyer, says in a divorce petition filed on behalf of M.M.
[...]
While courts in three provinces and the Yukon have ruled that the freedom of gays and lesbians to marry is guaranteed by the Charter of Rights, the Divorce Act hasn't been amended to apply to same sex couples.

She and her lawyer are asking the court to grant the divorce and issue an order that the definition of "spouse" under the Divorce Act is unconstitutional and offensive to their equality rights under the Charter. The act defines "spouse" as "of a man or woman who are married to each other."

You know I support gay couples' right to marry, so I obviously have no problem with them being allowed to get divorced. And I can't see why opponents of same-sex marriage would get upset about it, either. Why would they oppose a procedure which allows for the breakup of relationships they find inherently offensive?

I can't wait to see some of the comments I get for this one.

(Free legal advice for same-sex couples planning to marry: get a prenup. Come to think of it, that's my advice for straight people getting married, too.)

Great debate resolved

The Prof says Heinz is a clear winner over "W Ketchup" (and, in any event, the Heinz company's connection to Teresa Heinz Kerry is iffy at best).

Once again, we see the blogosphere covering a major story ignored by the mainstream media. For shame!

So close...

A newly released surveillance video from Washington Dulles airport shows four of the 9/11 hijackers being pulled aside for additional searching - just before they were cleared to go onto the plane. They were searched for explosives, but nothing was found - and except for utility knives in their carry-on luggage, which was perfectly legal at the time.

What can I say? On the morning of September 11, 2001, I certainly didn't think anyone would use box cutters to hijack four planes simultaneously, and I think the same can be said for the security staff. (But note that two of the hijackers had been put on terrorism watch lists just a few weeks earlier.)

Franchise of the Damned

The scariest, creepiest, most heartbreaking thing you will read all day: a brief history of the L.A. Clippers.

I only have a passing interest in the NBA (when I saw the Raptors with Bob, his girlfriend and Anthony last March, we spent more time drinking outrageously overpriced beers than paying attention to the game). But the misadventures of this cursed team are absolutely fascinating. The infamous Andrea Moda racing team was banned from F1 for "bringing the sport into disrepute"; can't the NBA come up with a similar rule to force Donald Sterling to sell his team?

This is why I really wish North American professional sports had relegation and promotion between different divisions, as in European soccer. If the Clippers risked a drop into the NBA Development League, you can be sure Sterling wouldn't allow his team to stay so bad for so long.

Car bomb in Nashville

An SUV blew up outside the Opryland Hotel, killing the driver. Police believe a bomb was involved, though that's unconfirmed. No word on the driver's identity, either.

Mercifully, it looks like there were no other injuries.

Update: this AP report identifies the driver (and presumably, the bomber) as a white male. This story (also by AP) says the SUV was a Range Rover. What a waste.

Islamic extremist? Radical-right militia member? Suicide attempt? Or just a horrible accident? Your guess is as good as mine.

Nukes in Iraq?

UPI says three missiles, tipped with nuclear warheads, have been found near Tikrit. An extraordinary development if true, but - as with almost all stories about WMD finds in Iraq - caveat lector.

(And in any case, everyone knows the Bush Administration and the Israelis planted them. Yeah.)

Update: the interim Iraqi government calls the report "stupid", which should presumably settle the matter.

Only in Russia

I don't mean to be disrespectful, but is there anywhere else on earth where you'd expect this to happen?

Bow to your new cabinet overlords

The good news: appeasenik Bill Graham has been replaced as Foreign Affairs Minister.

The bad news: he's our new defence minister.

Conspirozoid victory

The thoroughly repulsive Cynthia McKinney, who believes Bush allowed 9/11 to happen so he could...do something, I'm not sure exactly what, won the Democratic primary in her old congressional distrcict.

Moore surpasses satire

In the past, I've written that the left would have much more sympathy for the Israelis if they used the same tactics regularly used against them - suicide bombing and non-stop agitating in favor of genocide against the Palestinians. Lo and behold, here comes Michael Moore, seriously making essentially the same point in Dude, Where's my Country:

In his 2003 book "Dude, Where's My Country," Moore expresses sympathy with the Palestinians who danced in the streets to celebrate the fall of the World Trade Center: after all, America supports Israel, which kills innocent Palestinian children. Then, he makes a statement so mind-boggling that when I saw it on an anti-Moore website, I thought it might be distorted. It was not:

"Of course many Israeli children have died too, at the hands of the Palestinians. You would think that would make every Israeli want to wipe out the Arab world, but the average Israeli does not have that response. Why? Because in their hearts, they know they are wrong, and they know they would be doing just what the Palestinians are doing if the sandal were on the other foot."

If Michael Moore was around in 1942, he'd write about how the Jews must realize, deep down, that they've done something to upset the Germans. [Clarification: no, I'm not accusing Michael Moore of antisemitism or Nazi sympathies, but simply illustrating the sheer absurdity and offensiveness of his argument. I could just as easily have said, "if Moore were writing about Darfur, he'd say the Blacks must know they've done something to upset the Sudanese Arabs."]

In a related story, the UN General Assembly has voted 150-6 in favor of a resolution that the Israelis tear down the security barrier which, in recent months, has kept Hamas and the Al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigade out of Israel:

The UN General Assembly has voted overwhelmingly to demand Israel obey a World Court ruling and tear down its West Bank barrier, but Australia has joined Israel and the United States in opposing the resolution.

All 25 European Union countries voted in support of the Palestinian-drafted measure after its Arab sponsors approved a series of amendments proposed by the EU bloc over days of intense negotiations.

I haven't been able to find a copy of the resolution on the UN webpage, but some news stories say the Israelis are simply being asked to dismantle sections of the wall which extend beyond its 1967 borders. I guess that's a defensible position, but in a sane world we'd demand that the Palestinians deal with their genocidal terrorist groups - not to mention the constant agitation for the destruction of Israel in their schools and media - before they make Israel abandon a defensive measure.

In a sane world. Canada, by the way, abstained from the vote.

He's not real. We just made him up to scare children

Michael Jackson is...oh, you read it.

This explains a lot

Lenin had serious mental disorders brought on by syphilis:

There were whispers in the Kremlin and salons of Europe for decades but it was never more than idle gossip until a team of Israeli doctors announced that they had solved an 80-year-old medical mystery.

The doctors' diagnosis of crippling neurosyphilis that caused massive brain damage and dementia in Lenin in the last two years of his life is more than a historical curiosity that sullies the image of the founder of the Soviet Union.

So, the founder of the world's first communist state was insane. What's the excuse of the Green Left Weekly staff?

Quote of the Day

Mark Steyn on Darfur and the UN:

The USAF could target and bomb the Janjaweed as effectively as they did the Taliban. But then John Mann and Harold Pinter and Rupert Everett would get their knickers in a twist, and everyone from John Kerry to Polly Toynbee would complain that it's "illegitimate" unless it's authorised by the UN. The problem is, by the time you've gone through the UN, everyone's dead. [emphasis added]

In a related story, here's an example of the almost unimaginable horror taking place, as I write this, in Sudan (via LGF):

While African women in Darfur were being raped by the Janjaweed militiamen, Arab women stood nearby and sang for joy, according to an Amnesty International report published yesterday. The songs of the Hakama, or the "Janjaweed women" as the refugees call them, encouraged the atrocities committed by the militiamen.

The women singers stirred up racial hatred against black civilians during attacks on villages in Darfur and celebrated the humiliation of their enemies, the human rights group said.
[...]
During an attack on the village of Disa in June last year, Arab women accompanied the attackers and sang songs praising the government and scorning the black villagers.

The militiamen "are happy when they rape. They sing when they rape and they tell that we are just slaves and that they can do with us how they wish", a 37-year-old victim, identified as A, is quoted as saying in the report, which was based onmore than 100 testimonies from women in the refugee camps in neighbouring Chad.

Ten years after Rwanda, it's all happening again.

Only in Canada

It's impossible to imagine the Spaniards letting a Basque nationalist carry their flag at the Olympic opening ceremonies, nor the Russians nominating a Chechen separatist as their flag bearer. But our flag bearer, Nicolas Gill, is an admitted Quebec separatist:

AN ADMITTED separatist will carry the Canadian flag at the Summer Olympics in Athens. Nice.

When asked about his comments in a telephone interview yesterday, Gill did not distance himself from his published views.

The Toronto Sun's Steve Simmons notes that we could have given this great honour to wrestler Daniel Igali, an immigrant who adopted Canada as his home and won a gold medal at Sydney. But a man who wants to break up the country (and, for that matter, has never won gold) will carry its flag. Only in Canada.

How sweet is this?

Dodge is bringing back the Charger. It doesn't look as good as the 1960s original - what could?- but I admire this decision on principle. Now they need to produce a special edition painted bright orange with "01" on the doors.

Wasn't it just a year or so ago, when everyone had pronounced the DaimlerChrysler merger a total failure? It's looking pretty good from here.

This is McCarthyism?

When I heard that Elton John was comparing post-9/11 America to the McCarthy era, I momentarily wondered if he was talking about repressive "speech codes" on university campuses, or the way the word "neocon" is increasingly thrown around to shut down debate, the same way "communist" was used in the 1950s. Silly me:

Sir Elton John has attacked what he calls a McCarthy-like "era of censorship" in America. Entertainers who speak out against the Bush administration or its policy on Iraq, he claimed, risk scorn and damage to their livelihood.

"There's an atmosphere of fear in America right now that is deadly. Everyone is too career-conscious. They're all too scared," he added.
[...]
In the 1960s, "people like Bob Dylan, Nina Simone, The Beatles and Pete Seeger were constantly writing and talking about what was going on", he said. Now, "hardly any are doing it . . ." The era of protest songs by major artists was long gone. "That's not happening now. As of this spring, there have been virtually no anti-war concerts - or anti-war songs that catch on, for that matter."

He continued: "There was a moment about a year ago when you couldn't say a word about anything in this country for fear of your career being shot down by people saying you are un-American."

Elton John obviously hasn't been to any Madonna concerts lately. And I guess he's not part of the target audience for OzzFest, in which Ozzy Osbourne performs "War Pigs" before a backdrop comparing George W. Bush to Adolf Hitler. (Never heard that before.) For God's sake, the freaking number one album in the country has a song accusing Bush of carrying out 9/11 himself.

I guess he hasn't been to any movies lately, either. Fahrenheit 9/11, a "documentary" which stops just short of accusing Bush of complicity in the September 11 attacks, is on the verge of breaking $100M at the box office. This summer we've also seen The Day After Tomorrow, in which a Dick Cheney lookalike who opposes the Kyoto Accord is the bad guy, and the hilarious Anchorman, in which we learn that a character with an I.Q. of 45 goes on to become an advisor to the Bush White House. Next up is a remake of The Manchurian Candidiate, in which the villain is based on the Carlyle Group.

(No studio, of course, will even touch a project in which Islamic fundamentalists are the villains. It's like Hollywood stopped making movies about Nazis in 1941.)

The late night talk-show hosts certainly aren't letting the Bush Administration get away unscathed. Neither is the print media. Anti-Bush books by everyone from Richard Clarke to Molly Ivins to Maureen Dowd are displayed prominently in bookstores.

Yeah, it's a pity Slim-Fast decided its association with a comedian who makes dirty jokes about the President wasn't good for business (just as Florida Orange Juice growers gave in to boycott threats and dumped Rush Limbaugh as a spokesman a few years back). And Linda Rondstadt was booed off stage in Vegas for saying how much she loved Fahrenheit 9/11. Things might have been more testy about a year ago, but the Dixie Chicks still got a freaking Entertainment Weekly cover out of it.

The American government is coming under heavy criticism from the entertainment community, and it would be hard to envision a better symbol of a healthy democracy. Indeed, I defy anyone to show me a society that could suffer attacks on the magnitude of 9/11, and protect its civil liberties as well as the United States has - even with Christian fundamentalist John Ashcroft as Attorney General. (No one has any qualms about attacking his religion, of course.)

Canada lost one - one - person to the FLQ in October, 1970, and the government - led by civil libertarian Pierre Trudeau - imposed de facto martial law. And yet, there's a direct correlation between admiring Pierre Trudeau and bemoaning "creeping fascism" south of the border.

Go figure.

They're laughing at us

I've complained in the past about the sheer uselessness of the Northwest Atlantic Fisheries Organization, and here's another example:

Denmark says it will not abide by shrimp quotas set for the nose of the Grand Banks.

NAFO rules allow any of its members to opt out of the recommended quotas without penalty. [emphasis added]

The Newfoundland fishery has been all but destroyed, and the Europeans - the same Europeans who keep lecturing us about our "wasteful" North American lifestyles - are prepared to take everything that's left, conservation be damned. And Canada, evidently the only NAFO member that actually takes the organization seriously, is too cowed to do a bloody thing. Honest to God, is there another country on the planet which would put up with this nonsense?

She's 46?!?

Sharon Stone's still got it. Yowza.

Update: Britney, on the other hand, is starting to look 46.

The CRTC's stooges

Excellent column by Andrew Coyne on the way broadcasters have been so blatantly co-opted by the bureaucrats and censors of the CRTC:

Of all the many responses elicited by the CRTC's decision to ban radio station CHOI, le numéro un in Quebec City, the most intriguing was from the people who would seem most affected by it: broadcasters. Intriguing, that is, by its absence. The only comment I could find from an actual broadcaster, other than CHOI itself, was this stirring call to arms from John Hayes, president of Corus Entertainment's radio division: "If the CRTC didn't act on this case, which was so blatant, it would have set a very poor precedent for the future."

Mr. Hayes had reason to be circumspect. The next day, Corus emerged as one of the big winners in another CRTC decision approving nine foreign television channels for distribution on digital cable and satellite -- a winner, not because it was approved for any, but because of who else was not: RAI International, a would-be competitor to Corus's Telelatino channel in the Italian-language market. Indeed, RAI was turned down explicitly because it would provide such competition, which in the CRTC's world is a no-no. The CRTC's, and that of its industry cheerleaders.
[...]
It isn't as if this is the first time the CRTC has done something this outrageous. If its interference with content of which it does not approve seems to have attracted a little more notice this time, it may be because for once it did not hide behind the "industry" front group, known as the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council, through which it usually works its will. Remember the fracas over Howard Stern? Or (God help us) the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers? Both were effectively banned, not by any public order of the CRTC, but by the apparently spontaneous desire of the broadcast industry, those notorious paragons of taste, to spare Canadians from exposure to "inappropriate" programming.

So when the regulator elects to crack the whip more visibly, there is no one in a position to raise much of a fuss over it. Oh sure, the newspapers might editorialize against it, but who listens to them? And in any event, they are themselves increasingly coming under the CRTC's shadow: their broadcaster owners would rather take shots at each other than concentrate their fire on their lord and master. Indeed, as Colby Cosh has pointed out, the state suppression of CHOI was at least as much about intra-industry rivalries as it was about regulatory bluenoses. Among the complainants to the CRTC about CHOI's on-air comments were Bell ExpressVu and Videotron, whose satellite services a CHOI program host had encouraged his listeners to pirate.

One of the great myths of our time is that big business supports the free market. In reality, corporations are all in favor of regulation and bureaucracy if it will protect them from competition.

Palestinian chaos

Arafat's corrupt, incompetent leadership is facing unprecedented opposition from his own people:

Palestinian president Yasser Arafat's government was on the verge of collapse yesterday after a weekend of abductions, resignations, shooting and street violence that left the Gaza Strip in chaos.

Earlier yesterday, militants from Mr. Arafat's own Fatah movement burned down a security headquarters building in Khan Younis, in a growing struggle for control of Gaza's sprawling security services.
[...]
The crisis began early this month, when Palestinian legislators investigating allegations of corruption in the cement industry discovered that wealthy associates of Mr. Arafat, including his top financial adviser and the minister for trade, had facilitated the sale of cheap Egyptian cement to Israeli contractors building the hated security wall in the West Bank.

Last week, United Nations Middle East envoy Terje Larsen broke years of silence and publicly condemned Mr. Arafat, who he said was blocking progress toward peace and failing to implement security and democratic reforms demanded by the internationally backed "road map" for Middle East peace.

I can think of no fate too harsh for the miserable old killer, but I won't be celebrating too much until I find out what will replace him. Unless a new Palestinian government is willing to live in peace with Israel and try to create a working state with the territory they have - instead of devoting all resources to hateful antisemitic propaganda, and putting off the "nation-building" stuff until the Jews are pushed into the sea - the alternative will be no better than Arafat.